A solution of the affine quadratic inverse eigenvalue problem

The quadratic inverse eigenvalue problem (QIEP) is to find the three matrices M,C, and K, given a set of numbers, closed under complex conjugations, such that these numbers become the eigenvalues of the quadratic pencil P(λ)=λ2M+λC+K. The affine inverse quadratic eigenvalue problem (AQIEP) is the QIEP with an additional constraint that the coefficient matrices belong to an affine family, that is, these matrices are linear combinations of substructured matrices. An affine family of matrices very often arise in vibration engineering modeling and analysis. Research on QIEP and AQIEP are still at developing stage. In this paper, we propose three methods and the associated mathematical theories for solving AQIEP: A Newton method, an alternating projections method, and a hybrid method combining the two. Validity of these methods are illustrated with results on numerical experiments on a spring-mass problem and comparisons are made with these three methods amongst themselves and with another Newton method developed by Elhay and Ram (2002) [12]. The results of our experiments show that the hybrid method takes much smaller number of iterations and converges faster than any of these methods.